Scala is a new language for the Java Platform that blends object-oriented and functional programming concepts. This talk will focus on the design choices of Scala, and what they mean for developer productivity. The talk will highlight what it means to program in a functional style, and show you how Scala facilitates programming in a hybrid of both functional and imperative styles. The talk will also explore how Scala compares to dynamic languages such as Ruby and Python. And you’ll see examples of real, production Scala code that will illustrate …

Alf Kristian Støyle demonstrated using Scala on top of JavaRebel, a JVM plugin that reloads modified class files on-the-fly.

In this presentation from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, Cliff Click discusses how to optimize generated bytecode for running on the JVM. Click analyzes and reports on Java, Scala, Clojure, JRuby, JPC and JavaScript/Rhino and points out several places where each of them could increase their performance such as elimination of FixNums, escape analysis and best practices for testing bytecode.
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